"To Make a Stock Pop: Innovate"

Well, duh (NYT). Profits are the result of innovation. It therefore follows and is confirmed that those who spend more money on research and development tend to outperform those who spend less and cut back during hard times.

While it would have been useful if the NYT had bothered with giving us the performance differential between those who spent more on R&D and the control group, the research also undercuts the argument that those who profit have some sort of obligation to give back given the benefits of their research and investments made before the fact and further undercuts the cynical idea that profit is largely achieved through cronyism and what amounts to fraud.